Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

As part of the 1996 federal welfare reform, lawmakers required unmarried, minor parents to live with their own parents (or another qualified adult). This paper considers a few key issues related to this requirement: (1) Prior to the living arrangements requirement, did income from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) lead teenage mothers to move out of their parents' home? (2) Did young mothers who stayed at home do better or worse that their peers who moved out? (3) How solid is the research evidence about these topics? Measurement barriers in census data prior to the mid-1990s and in state program administrative data, in the past and still today, impede identification of all teenage parents who live at home. Yet, even given this undercount, available data indicates that most unmarried, minor mothers lived with their parents, or other adult relatives, prior to the 1996 welfare reform. Although the research based on the topic is small, there is not clear evidence that the small fraction of young mothers who moved out of their parents' home did so because they could use AFDC income. Consistent descriptive evidence does suggest that living in a three-generational household is associated with teenage mothers' greater economic self-sufficiency; at the same time, however, coresiding teenage mothers appear to exhibit poorer parenting skills and the effects on their children and their own parents remain little understood. These findings are discussed in relation to the minor parent policy, and recommendations for future research are made including: (1) collection of data that better identifies minor parent families living in senior parents' households, (2) using whole-family perspectives that look beyond the minor mother to the well-being of her parents, children, and other family members, (3) studies that consider the selection of teenage mothers into various living arrangements when studying their consequences, and (4) intensive studies of positive and negative aspects of family functioning and social networks when minor mothers live in various living arrangements.

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

This article examined the impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform, based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Using a sample of 1,681 single mothers living in poverty, this study compared the effects of economic well-being and home environment scores on their children during pre- and post-Welfare Reform years. Following the 1996 Welfare Reform, fewer mothers received cash payments, and those who did received lower payments, while more mothers worked at low-paying jobs. Negative impacts were more pronounced for less educated mothers. The effects of family income and home environment scores on children were different before and after the 1996 Welfare Reform. Maternal education moderated these associations. Instead of enforcing the current "work first" mandate, this research supports giving priority to maternal education to enhance child and family well-being in low-income families. (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliography Citation

Lee, Kyunghee. "Impact of the 1996 Welfare Reform on Child and Family Well-being." Journal of Community Psychology 37,5 (July 2009): 602-617.